Microsoft is on track to reach its sales target of $300 million for Halo 4. If successful, this will be the most successful launch of Halo in the history of the franchise and the biggest entertainment launch of the year to date, claims Microsoft.

Within 24 hours after Halo 4 was released, the title was able to rack up an astounding $220 million in sales globally. The $220 million passes both Halo 3 and Halo Reach. With the $220 million on launch day, this brings the franchise to an incredible total of $3.38 billion in sales since the launch of the first Halo title.

If that isn’t impressive enough, Halo 4 also smashed the record for the largest number of players in the franchise history in the first five days, with over 4 million players. These players played a lot of Halo 4, combining for 31.4 million hours of game play.

According to reports, Microsoft claims that Halo 4 was the most expensive game ever produced, and reviews have proven that the money was well spent. The company is excited by the strong showing of Halo 4, and sources tell us that they are expecting a banner holiday season for the Xbox 360 and associated software titles.

Microsoft is set to make Halo 4 the biggest ever midnight launch with more than 10,000 stores to be part of the festivities. Retailers will begin to sell the title in over 40 countries at 12:01am on November 6th.

In addition to the regular retailers opening their doors at midnight, Microsoft is throwing parties at 30 marquee launch events around the world for one of the most highly anticipated titles to be released this year. Sites in Seattle, Paris, Berlin, Toronto, Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Dubai, and Sydney are just some of the cities that will have marquee launch events.

Early reviews of the title are already starting to tumble in, with reviewers seeming to be in agreement that Halo 4 is a highly recommended title that is a must buy, with very high review scores.

How many copies of Halo games do you own? If you take a look around, the numbers might actually surprise you. From its first release of Halo Combat Evolved for the original Xbox to the upcoming release of Halo 4 on the Xbox 360, the numbers you own might actually surprise you.

Microsoft is getting ready to release the latest entry in the Halo franchise known as Halo 4 and has paused to reflect on this; and what a better way to do it than with numbers. In this case, the number is 46. 46 million is the number of Halo copies of the different games in the franchise sold worldwide. The 46 million translate into almost $3 billion (with a “B”) in sales dollars.

When Halo: Reach was released, developer Bungee raked in over $200 million in sales in the US and Europe within the first 24 hours, and word is that Microsoft is expecting Halo 4 to do even better.

Let us leave you with one more fun fact. Halo has seen more than five billion hours of game play that have been logged on Xbox Live. Those are some impressive numbers, and Microsoft is expecting Halo 4 to start breaking records when it arrives early next month.

Microsoft is hiring in its Vancouver Game Studios for a new project and they are looking to hire people to help with the development of a new AAA core action console game title, according to job descriptions. Sources tell us that the title that the studio is developing is targeted toward the next generation of Xbox console, rather than the current one.

The Vancouver Game Studios was the studio responsible for the development of Microsoft’s free-to-play flight simulator called Microsoft Flight, but since Microsoft closed Flight, the studio has seen some layoffs. The studio and teams were aligned to work on the next project, which originally had been said to be the children’s Kinect project called codename Columbia, but Microsoft has said that the studio had multiple projects in the pipeline.

While Microsoft has not formally announced what the studio is working on, it would seem by the job descriptions that it is much more than just a children’s title.

Phil Spencer of Microsoft Studios claims that Halo 4 is the most expensive game ever produced by Microsoft. No other game even comes close, according to Spencer.

In a recent interview with Polygon, Spencer claims that Halo 4 is the “most important entertainment product in the company.” Halo 4 is headed to global release on November 6th exclusively for the Xbox 360, and early indications are that it could be the best of the franchise yet; and could be poised to break previous sales records for the franchise.

Microsoft has a lot riding on Halo 4 with the creation of the new 343 Industries, which has become the developer of the franchise after the departure of Bungee after finishing Halo 3, and returning to an independent studio once again. Fans had expressed significant reservations over how Halo would be in the future and if 343 could carry on the tradition of the franchise, but early looks at the game seem to have washed those fears away, with players being very excited about the upcoming release of Halo 4.

Read more with Phil Spencer and learn about the play testing of Halo 4 here.

To no one’s surprise, Halo 4 will have a Game Pass. The Halo 4 Game Pass will get buyers access to the three War Games map packs at a 15% discount.

The map packs are due to be released for Halo 4 in December, February, and April. Those that purchase the War Games pass will also get two bonus in-game items, which are two helmets (the Scanner and the Strider) along with a unique in-game Falcon emblem.

The War Games map pack is part of the Halo 4 Limited Edition package at no charge, or you can opt in for the War Games pass at $24.99 or 2,000 Microsoft Points, which is a 15% savings over buying them one at a time.

Big news for those excited about the release of Forza Horizon. Developer Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios have confirmed that the game will be getting a full-featured Rally Expansion Pack, which will arrive on December 18th.

The Rally Expansion Pack will deliver a rally experience for Forza Horizon drivers who will get the chance to tackle the off-road areas of Colorado. It promises to deliver all of the excitement of rally driving, with deep ruts, higher jumps and new driving surface types. Of course, the Rally Expansion Pack will include new rally tuned cars, co-driver calls, all new rally events, and (of course) a slew of new Achievements to earn.

When the Rally Expansion Pack arrives on December 18th, it will cost 1,600 Microsoft Points, or if you already have purchased the 4,000 Microsoft Point Forza Horizon Season Pass, it will be included as part of your Season Pass offerings at no additional charge.

Speaking of the Season Pass, it has been confirmed that if you take the plunge and purchase the Forza Horizon Season Pass, you will get five exclusive cars, with one being delivered for download on the 3rd Tuesday of each month starting in November 2012 and running through March 2013. So far, we only know that the first car will be the 2006 Lamborghini Miura Concept as the November Season Pass bonus car.

The number of additional bonus cars is looking pretty good for Forza Horizon, with bonus cars coming for pre-ordering the game, included with the collector’s edition, for playing and downloading the demo, and for buying the season pass. It seems that Playground Games and Turn 10 are making a serious statement with this release, and early reviews as well as the demo are indicating that this is a title worth buying.

With news of a leaked version of Halo 4 that is running rampant on torrent sites everywhere comes news that Microsoft is less than happy that the leaked version is so widespread. If you happen to be playing or thinking about playing this torrent-acquired leaked version of Halo 4, we suggest that you think again if you value your Xbox Live account.

Sources tell us that Microsoft is swinging the ban hammer with a vengeance to deal with those who have chosen to break the rules and download and play Halo 4. The Microsoft Xbox Live Enforcement team is aggressively issuing permanent ban notifications to offenders, citing “pre-release title play” as the reason for the permanent ban from Xbox Live.

When a permanent ban is issued by the Microsoft Xbox Live enforcement team, your Xbox Live privileges will not be reinstated and, of course, you also lose all of your gamer scores. According to sources, Microsoft isn’t playing around here; and when you get caught, you are going to be banned for life and that’s it. No word on how many have been banned for pre-release title play, but we suspect the numbers are pretty large considering how easy it is to acquire Halo 4 from the torrents.

Microsoft has announced that Halo 4’s multiplayer has components on the second disc included in the Halo 4 package will have to be installed in order to be played. The data on disc 2 for the multiplayer will require 8GB of storage. This means it will not work on Xbox 360 4GB systems without additional storage.

The additional storage can come in the form of a hard drive, of course, or a USB flash drive up to 16GB that is compatible with the system. With the low cost of compatible 16GB USB flash drives these days, it really should not be that big of a deal. In the case of Xbox 360 owners who have the non-slim version of the console, used hard drives in sizes from 20GB to 250GB are in abundance at all price points.

According to Microsoft, the “extensive suite of multiplayer features” made the installation necessary, but it should not create that much of a hardship to Xbox 360 4GB console owners wanting to play Halo 4 in multiplayer mode, given the lower costs associated with USB flash drives or used hard drives. In fact, the numbers of users that don’t have additional storage is likely to be fewer than one might think.

This is not the first time that we have seen additional content required to be loaded on a USB Flash Drive or the hard drive to get the most out of a game. By today’s standards, the 8GB of storage on an Xbox 360 disc is small compared to the 50GB offered by the Blu-ray on the PlayStation 3, or the 25GB offered by the upcoming Wii U. However, Microsoft has already addressed the situation once by maximizing the space that developers have to use on the disc when they introduced the new disc format in one of the previous updates. We are doubtful that the news will move the meter much, as users will be willing to buy a flash drive or a used drive in order to play Halo 4 in multiplayer.

Those that have downloaded the Forza Horizon demo will get a good taste of what to expect from the game. The thing is, however, that after playing it we have to admit that it was a bit short and kind of over before it got really started.

While we don’t want to spoil the surprise of the demo, what we can tell you is that Playground Games has done a great job extending the world of Forza into a fun open world environment where we were able to go anywhere we could see and drive in a detailed and excellent looking open world environment.

While Forza fans might not be sure what to expect from this new entry in the Forza family, we found the addition to be fun; but with the demo it is hard to tell all that you could do with the game. What we can tell you is that it is open world, the cars are cool, the graphics look great, and the cars handle well. We expect that the game will appeal to both fans of Forza and those who just like the open world drop in and drop out racing.

You still have a limited time to download and play the demo before the game is released; and if you do you will get a special car with a special livery from Playground for checking out the demo. We are told that this car will never be released in any other way.